Undergraduate chemistry programs

The maintenance and enhancement of an effective approval procedure for undergraduate chemistry programs that benefits the programs, students, and employers by providing the greatest return on their efforts and those of the committee and staff. 

Proposed Revision of the ACS Guidelines for Undergraduate Chemistry Programs, American Chemical Society Committee on Professional Training,... 

The ACS Committee on Professional Training (CPT) has just released its new guidelines for undergraduate chemistry programs (27). The new guidelines will afford chemistry departments increased flexibility in offering specific tracks... 

Physical chemistry (PChem) is one of the core and hard-to-achieve courses in undergraduate chemistry programs. It is considered an essential course in the education and training not only of chemists but also of many other specialists. Also, the concepts, models, theories, methods, and tools of PChem are included in all chemistry courses at both secondary and tertiary levels (Tsaparlis Finlayson, 2014). 

A total of 13 faculty completed anonymous web-based evaluations of the material. Most faculty in the group were tenured (9/13), one-third were at research universities, one-third at liberal arts colleges and the remainder at comprehensive universities. Undergraduate enrollments ranged from 1350 to over 40,000. Chemistry programs ranged in size from 2 majors to more than 70 per year. 

With undergraduate research programs reinstituted into colleges and universities, and with expanded opportunities offered by National Laboratories, the one venture that had not been undertaken, except with only a handful of chemical companies as more than a local initiative, was student involvement in industrial research. The vast majority of students drawn into chemistry careers enter industrial positions, yet very few of them ever have the opportunity to experience these environments prior to entering full-time employment... 

More than any other researcher in a department of chemistry, the scholarly work of the chemical education researcher will be influenced by both the research and educational missions of the department and of the institution. The research mission of the department will have an impact on the expectations that will exist for scholarly work in the area of chemical education. It is not fair to oversimplify the situation by saying that institutions with less research emphasis will expect less research from a chemical education researcher and those with a heavy research emphasis will expect more. Indeed, many departments with a heavy research emphasis do not consider their chemical education researchers to be researchers in chemistry, and in some cases do not expect them to be. For example, there are institutions who hire a specialist in chemical education to direct a large undergraduate education program, sometimes consisting of many hundreds of students who will be enrolled in first and second year chemistry courses with laboratory components. Likewise, smaller institutions, where there is less traditional chemistry research, may be interested in emphasizing research... 

This program is marketed as an exploratory tool for undergraduate organic chemistry students. As an educational tool, it is well designed. The program, as is, might also serve as a reminder of possible options for synthetic chemists. It could also be useful to the research community if more reactions are included in future versions. 

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